The Return of the Prodigal Part 26

Furnival was silent.

"Did you propose to her, or what?"

"I made," said Furnival, "a sort of p-proposal."

"That she should count the world well lost--was that it?"

"Well, she knew I wasn't going to marry anybody, and I knew she wasn't going to marry me. Now was she?"

"No. She most distinctly wasn't."

"Very well, then--how was I to know? I could have sworn----"

He hid his face in his hands again.

"The fact is, I made the devil of a mistake."

"Yes," said Straker. "I saw you making it."

Furnival's face emerged angry.

"Then why on earth didn't you _tell_ me? I asked you. Why couldn't you tell me what she was like?"

"You don't tell," said Straker.

Furnival groaned. "I can't make it out _now_. It's not as if she hadn't got a t-t-temperament."

"But she hasn't. _That_ was the mistake you made."

"You'd have made it yourself," said Furnival.

"I have. She's taken me in. She _looks_ as if she had temperament--she behaves as if she had--oceans. And she hasn't, not a sc.r.a.p."

"Then what does she do it for? What does she do it for, Straker?"

"I don't know what she does it for. She doesn't know herself.

There's a sort of innocence about her."

"I suppose," said Furnival pensively, "it's innocence."

"Whatever it is, it's the quality of her defect. She can't let us alone. It amuses her to see us squirm. But she doesn't know, my dear fellow, what it feels like; because, you see, she doesn't feel. She couldn't tell, of course, the lengths _you'd_ go to."

Straker was thinking how horrible it must have been for Philippa.

Then he reflected that it must have been pretty horrible for Furny, too--so unexpected. At that point he remembered that for Philippa it had not been altogether unexpected; f.a.n.n.y had warned her of this very thing.

"How--did she--take it?" he inquired tentatively.

"My dear fellow, she sat there--where you are now--and lammed into me. She made me feel as if I were a cad and a beast and a ruffian--as if I wanted k-kick-kicking. She said she wouldn't have seen that I existed if it hadn't been for f.a.n.n.y Brocklebank--I was her friend's guest--and when I tried to defend myself she turned and talked to me about things, Straker, till I blushed. I'm b-blushing now."

He was.

"And, of course, after that, I've got to go."

"Was that all?" said Straker.

"No, it wasn't. I can't tell you the _other_ things she said."

For a moment Furny's eyes took on a marvelous solemnity, as if they were holding for a moment some sort of holy, supersensuous vision.

Then suddenly they grew reminiscent.

"How could I tell, Straker, how could I possibly tell?"

And Straker, remembering the dance that Philippa had led him, and her appearance, and the things, the uncommonly queer things she had done to him with her eyes, wondered how Furny _could_ have told, how he could have avoided drawing the inferences, the uncommonly queer inferences, he drew. He'd have drawn them himself if he had not known Philippa so well.

"What I want to know," said Furnival, "is what she did it for?"

He rose, straightening himself.

"Anyhow, I've got to go."

"Did she say so?"

"No, she didn't. She said it wasn't necessary. _That_ was innocent, Straker, if you like."

"Oh, jolly innocent," said Straker.

"But I'm going all the same. I'm going before breakfast, by the seven-fifty train."

And he went. Straker saw him off.

IX

That was far and away the most disconcerting thing that had happened at Amberley within Straker's recollection.

It must have been very disagreeable for Philippa.

When, five days ago, he had wondered if he would ever live to see Philippa disconcerted, he had not contemplated anything like this.

Neither, he was inclined to think, had Philippa in the beginning.

She could have had no idea what she was letting herself in for. That she had let herself in was, to Straker's mind, the awful part of it.

As he walked home from the station he called up all his cleverness, all his tact and delicacy, to hide his knowledge of it from Philippa. He tried to make himself forget it, lest by a word or a look she should gather that he knew. He did not want to see her disconcerted.

The short cut to Amberley from the station leads through a side gate into the turning at the bottom of the east walk. Straker, as he rounded the turning, saw Miss Tarrant not five yards off, coming down the walk.

He was not ready for her, and his first instinct, if he could have yielded to it, would have been to fly. That was his delicacy.

He met her with a remark on the beauty of the morning. That was his tact.